The subtitle for this, of course, would have been “But we’re not surprised because we’ve only been talking about these kinds of things for the last four months”, but that was just entirely too long for a title.

But yes, three major points have emerged from CES that validate pretty much everything we’ve been reporting here for about the last third of a year.  There was one surprise, however, and that’ll be here too. With no further introduction, those three points:

1. Blu-ray isn’t going away any time soon. Yes, lovely.  What precisely would it have been replaced with?  HD DVD?  The sudden return of Laserdisc?  Next up on Obvious Generality Theater: Almost No One Has A VCR Any More.

2. Streaming is the Next Big Thing, and It’ll Be Here In Force Soon. Oh, bravo.  Clearly the folks at CES are in fact literate, because only hundreds of entertainment and theater journalists have been saying the exact same thing for months now.  Of course, the big problem here is still the lack of bandwidth and net speed, but I can only hope that’s being worked on.

3. 3D will likely be the format of choice. This is a bit more understated of a concept, and was actually something of a surprise.  With a disaster of an economy still in play, the folks at CES are banking on people to buy brand new hardware to support the 3-D format.

I personally don’t buy a word of that last one, myself, The economy is still a rolling catastrophe, so I kind of doubt people will be in a hurry to shell out a couple grand on a new 3D television.  But two out of three ain’t bad, and that’s what we got out of CES.